MAKING SENSE OF ORIGINAL SIN...
Written by Bob Woffinden
İNew Musical Express
20 Dec 1975
THE BALLAD OF STEELEYE SPAN
Being the strange tale of a band of wandering minstrels who, in the year of our Lord 1973 (or thereabouts) didst most cruelly scorch their pure-hearted followers to a frazzle with magical electric lutes and citterns and such like. Believe me, it was a hell of a thing at the time - but they got on 'Top Of The Pops' and lived happily ever after. They also visited Norway, and BOB WOFFINDEN went with them.
IN BRITAIN we voted to stay in. In Eire and Denmark they voted to go in. In Norway the public answered the call to European economic arms with a resounding NO. The Government fell.
Then what? Political affairs , resumed their normal stable course, and , all the North Sea oil the future prosperity of the country, is unquestionably Norway's own. Their government doesn't need to bargain for separate representation at a conference to discuss the future distribution of its own energy resources.
The Common Market debate in Norway Was conducted with admirable common sense. It opened up whole areas of public discussion. The positive sides of nationalism were stressed, a thorough investigation of Norway's own heritage was undertaken.
Musically this meant that ethnomusicologists scoured Norwegian mountainsides, discovering old men banging drums, and their ilk. Folklore was alive and well, and was duly celebrated.
In Oslo last week, a local journalist tendered that, as part of the reason for the current interest there in groups like Steeleye Span and Fairport Convention. And since we're here to discuss the visit of Steeleye to Norway, there is a further point of reference to be established the predilections of Norwegian myth and are similar to England's own.
Where Norway has trolls, England has elves and witches; and that is the stuff with which Steeleye invest their music. Both "Alison Gross" ("Alison Gross She must be/The ugliest witch in the North Country") and "Dance With Me" ("As he a rode through a forest near /The elf-king's daughter did appear") have been collected - by Bob Johnson from Norwegian sources.
Hard on the heels of their recently completed British tour, Steeleye have been undertaking a tour of Norway and Germany. The 1975 British tour will probably be remembered as the one that finally broke the band in a big way. For years they have been regularly selling out nation-wide tours, and never shifting less than 60,000 of each album, but all without quite being considered a major band.
Suddenly, they're almost there. At the very least, they're an established band who are very hot right now. All the hard work is paying off right now and along the way they've resolved various incompatibilities that were implicit from the start.
In Norway they're playing to, on average, small audiences of roughly 800, playing gigs at venues not generally considered worthwhile for British rock-bands (skein, for example) hoping to build up audiences in the way they did in England. No doubt hard - work will pay off more quickly there.
They're staying at the Hotel Bristol - hardly the best place to afford an insight into local character, but then hotels never are, especially this one with its deliberate Anglo ambience. The lobby is lushly furnished after the style of a library in Edwardian England, and is replete with several Chesterfields these days.
The band have a road crew of five, who deal with all aspects of the tour. The lighting system has been retained from their British concerts, and while the band are very pleased with it; I find it often leaves the stage frustratingly dark - certainly it makes it more difficult for NME's Pennie Smith to get the snaps that matter.
I'm immediately put on the defensive, because the band found Rod McShane's NME review of their Hammersmith concert to be the unacceptable face of rock criticism. It contained one tendentious remark ("The aisle-jigging finale is shamelessly led by manager Tony Secunda") that was inaccurate - at the time Seconda had been in the upstairs bar - and also presupposed a constant dichotomy in the band.
Nothing, said Bob Johnson could be further from the truth. "We're happier now as a band, together, than we have ever been.
The band have just returned from an afternoon press reception, to be greeted with the news that the "All around my Hat" single sold 23,000 in Britain the previous day - the best day's sales yet - and has also entered the American charts at No 157 (with a bullet - try singing that).
"Why make do with one house?" says Johnson. "I may as well have two." Last time I saw him he was worried about paying the phone bill.
STEELEYE SPAN was originally formed by Ashley Hutchings in 1969. At that time Hutchings had just quit Fairport Convention, a rock band who had muddled their way into the folk slipstream and he was intrigued by the possibility of founding a band devoted exclusively to the use of folk music in an electrified setting.
He felt - as did Tim Hart and Maddy Prior, a duo enormously popular on the club circuit - that the whole Folk Revival had become stagnated and, worse, bedevilled with reactionary attitudes. Innovation was spurned and electrification regarded with contumely, as antithetical to the tradition.
All Steeleye originally wanted to prove was that it was possible to combine tastefully folk song material and electric instrumentation.
While real traditional music was obviously best considered separately, folk music could not be expected to halt at a certain point in its development; like the value of the pound, it's not immutable. If it was to remain vital, it had to reflect the spirit of the times.
The group numbered five at the start: Hutchings Hart and Prior, plus another duo, Gay and Terry Woods. The first album, "Hark The village wait" (Hutchings wanted to call the band Middlemarch Wait") Was a tentative step indeed towards electrification, dulcimer and autoharp were prominent, and despite the inclusion of "hard" industrial songs like "Blackleg Miner", gentleness predominated.
Though everything gelled for that album the blend of personalities didn't work out. Gay and Terry Woods departed, and were replaced by Martin Carthy (who had first suggested the name "Steeleye Span" ) and the unknown Peter Knight on violin. This line-up then went out on the road (something the first crew had never done) and put together a second album, "Please To See The King" that will probably stand forever.
There was no percussion, sparse instrumentation, but strength in depth in the vocals department; and the songs were well-chosen - check out "Lark In The Morning" or "Lovely On The Water". It's a beautiful, timeless album.
The next, "Ten Man Mop or Mr. Reservoir Butler Rides Again" was disappointing in comparison. It perfectly demonstrated the theory that the more the attention you pay to the packaging, the less stimulating the contents inside are likely to be anyway, the strains of the line-up were beginning to tell.
Carthy was too accomplished and distinctive a performer ever to merge his talents into a group, and had continued to play solo (as, indeed, had Tim and Maddy) tension eventually surfaced after Keith Dewshurst had written a play "Corunna", for the band to perform at London's Royal Court Theatre.
Though the play ran successfully for a time, Hutchings became disenchanted with theatrics and opted to leave. Hart wanted to replace him with another bass-player, Carthy preferred a multi-instrumentalist; when the others discovered that newcomer Rick Kemp slotted in well Carthy left too.
Kemp had, gained experience as a bass-player working in Hull with the underrated Michael Chapman. He'd also been a member of King Crimson for about a week. Then Bob Johnson friend of Knight's, was induced to forsake a lucrative accountancy career to join as lead guitarist. Johnson had worked years earlier with people like P.J. Proby and Paul Raven (later to become G.Glitter); these changes were significant - Johnson and Kemp became the first members of the band to have had regular training as rock musicians.
More than just the line-up changed at this juncture.
By now, Steeleye's first-stage rocket was burnt out. "Please To See The King" and their subsequent live appearances had established them as what Robin Denselow, in "The Electric Muse" terms "The first folk-rock supergroup," but now they needed someone to take them higher.
"This is a real stomperama," says Bob Johnson as we enter the venue. It is a large. American-style sports stadium, used quite regularly for all kinds of rock concerts; the seating has been banked to a point halfway down the hall as it will not be filled tonight. There's a cursory sound-check at 6.00, which indicates that everything is A. O.K, before the band - minus Maddy - attend to the more serious business of playing football with local kids who've already effected an entrance.
Maddy, meantime bemoans the difficulties under which Steeleye have laboured to establish a corporate identity. She's annoyed that her earlier albums with Tim ("Folk Songs Of Olde England Vol.I & II" and "Summer Solstice") have been dredged up so often. It just served to confuse their audience, which was getting younger all the time. Maddy put the mass of the kids at the gigs in South Wales as 17 or 18.
No-one seemed worried about the anticipated size of this audience. It is the beginning of Norway's bleak midwinter and snowing heavily outside. The population of Oslo is some 800,000 and the figure for the whole of Norway is only some four million- not large. Last week, Weather Report and Dr. Hook played to audiences of roughly this size, and a recent excursion by the Rollers had attracted only 1,200. Norwegians, anyway, have little opportunity to evaluate rock music at first hand. The country has one television and one radio channel, each controlled by the government. There are eight hours of pop music on the radio each Week and three on television. Norwegians mostly listen to English and Swedish radio and derive their tastes from that.
Straight pop music has never even made it here. Audiences seem to like bands either to be heavy (say, Uriah Heep) Or to have some worthy, semi- intellectual content. When the air-play from "All Around My Hat" begins to get through, the Spanners will be guaranteed a good attendance in Norway.
Although the promoter is making a loss on this concert, he is good-humoured. He confidently predicts that in six months Steeleye will be able to fill the hall (it has a capacity of 5,500) and then the Kroner will roll in.
Meanwhile, he makes me an offer I can't refuse. " You know Steeleye are a clean-living band - they go to bed early but you, you want to see some clubs, some night-life, yes?"
The band signed a promising deal with Chrysalis Records and got themselves a new manager Jo Lustig, an American who had often worked with British folk acts, most notably Ralph McTell and Pentangle, the latter of whom had been enormously successful at one stage.
Certainly Lustig ensured that any one who signed with him was given a hefty push up the ladder. He was to do no less for Steeleye.
The line-up that signed with Lustig is the one that has been together ever since. By the time they put together the fourth album, "Below The Salt", it was already evident that bigger things were beginning to happen. Although the sound on the album is very thin by comparison with what they're now putting down, the instrumentation was more ambitious than formerly, the selection of songs really sharp. The album, released in autumn 1972, provided the band with a hit single at the end of 1973 - "Gaudete, Gaudete".
For the next album, they finally added limited percussive effects" courtesy of Rick Kemp. "Parcel Of Rogues" was rightly recognised as a turning -point. Some of the folk enthusiasts who had been in tow since 'Please To See The King" found it unpleasantly raucous. But in any case Steeleye suffered from a recurrent stigma. To the folk purist, performers should be self-abnegating - you know there's no success like failure, and commercial success is the biggest failure of all.
At the other extreme, rock enthusiasts have been more ready to write off the folk wave for their commercial shilly-shallying. Now Steeleye's pioneering approach was picking up some of that audience which automatically alienated dogmatic folkies.
But "Parcel or Rogues" evinced a new hardness. As Tim Hart now says: "We sold out the moment we plugged in. Even then it was too late to stop...
It was absurd that Kemp should have been playing drums, even though he acquitted himself well. Steeleye's work was developing a backbone, and they obviously needed a full-time drummer. They'd got places to go. It was Charles Shaar Murray who suggested to the band that they search out Nigel Pegrum, the ex-Gnidrolog drummer. Pegrum was holed up in a Worcestershire Commune, but the message belatedly got though and he proved the man for the job.
Even before Pegrum joined, the band were caught up in a swelling wave of public approbation. For the next three years, this progress was maintained for their concerts; it was SRO whenever they toured.
The 'Corunna' had not been forgotten, and Steeleye's sense of theatrics in live performance was being sharpened all the while. They introduced various costume changes into the act, as well as rock`n`roll medleys. They knew the Value of the element of surprise, and of putting on a highly professional show. It was axiomatic that they were irresistibly good as a live-band. The moment when five of them advanced to separate microphones, hands clasped to ears, for the harmonies became almost their trademark.
With new vistas opening before them, on the point of developing into what Murray described as "the first space age folk group",they faltered. The sixth album, though it contained the quintessential Steeleye track, was a real mess.
"Thomas The Rhymer" was the one track of monumental accomplishment. It cleverly counter pointed a hard rock basis with restrained woodwind interludes. There were dark, magical elements in the best traditions of the band - it was written by Johnson and it's his obvious relish of the macabre that has distinguished the band's later material.
Again, Maddy's vocals were becoming ever more accomplished, and songs like "Drink Down The Moon" - actually a combination of two traditional songs - were finely structured.
But the group were losing their visionary impetus. While the album showed a fine variety of styles, it showed no overall direction "Long A Growing," a nod in the direction of their roots, fitted in oddly, and the whole concept was ill-conceived. Experimentation became disorientation.
"Now We Are Six," the album's title, referred to the addition of Pegrum, and the fact that it was their sixth album; to develop this further, they included some nursery rhymes, complete with Miss Pringle on piano, which served only to dilute the sombre, menacing atmosphere of the best tracks.
There was one dreadful miscegenation - a version of Phil Spector's "To Know Him Is To Love Him" which even the presence of the illustrious David Bowie on saxophone could not rescue.
For the 1974 British tour Steeleye took their penchant for dramatics to its natural conclusion by, performing a Mummers Play, as well as using a piece of film to narrate the story of "The Bold Poachers" for an opening gambit. It was splendid stuff, but had Steeleye missed the point.
"Commoner's Crown", the next album, was a perfect distillation of their second-stage Work, It was everything that "Now We Are Six" should have been; but it displayed an erosion of momentum, in that concentrated not on going forward but on tidying up what had gone before. It was a fine album, and songs like "long Lankin" and "Demon Lover" was beautifully, realised - but it evinced what economists might term a negative growth rate.
Bob Johnson analysed the dilemma facing the band at this point. "Because we actually like the academic traditional music as it exits, it became very hard to decide what forms of that music one should take and adapt for the rock idiom, and which one shouldn't.
"I think ballads generally work better as they tend to be of a heavier lyrical nature. They tend to be murder ballads - most have been supernatural because that's my main interest - and because they are heavier material to begin with, they are easier to treat heavily. Also as a rock guitarist I played incredibly quietly on stage; and I did that because if I'd played more loudly I'd be told you couldn't hear the vocals. Now with any other electric band, people wouldn't have expected to hear the vocals word for word. So you've got to go out there and be a rock band, to make it valid (else you may as well be playing folk clubs), but at the same time you have to do it on tiptoe".
All these contradictions were making themselves felt, and further, Steeleye seemed to be playing for audiences who were not receptive to change. They also began to feel that the energy they had spent in developing their stage act might have been better utilised on their music. Their albums sold well, but only well enough to cover the costs they incurred touring here and in the States. Their lengthy period of unproductive work stateside had drained their financial resource.
By this time the band were a mess of blues. When their contract with Jo Lustig ran out in May 1975, they didn't renew it. It was time for the third stage rocket to be fired.
Once again when their fortunes were at a low ebb, the band reacted by changing managers, Lustig had done really well by them (including getting them television exposure through the "Electric Folk" series); his success in recent months with The Chieftains testifies to his capabilities, but at this point there seemed little more he could do.
So the band, with no manager, cancelled all future gigs; they were quite adrift. The first priority was a new manager.
The band drew up a list of nine names and Hart went to see Tony Seconda, an old acquaintance who had been involved with the careers of The Move, Marc Bolan, the Moody Blues and Procol Harum, but had now virtually retired.
"First of all can I clear the air?', said Tim, "can I assume that you have no interest at all in managing us?" Hart was startled when Seconda replied "No". Negotiations proceeded from that point.
The next problem was the glaring need for a producer. What would happen," Says - Johnson; "is that Rick and Nigel would put down a superb bass/drum part; and then we'd put on just one guitar, and the vocals. Probably we could have tripled the guitars, and made it really heavy; what we needed was a real producer who could take those sort of decisions.
When Ian Anderson produced' Now We Are Six' for us, he almost treated us a bit too respectfully, because he never suggested adding things.
It was Tim Hart's idea to bring in Mike Batt. "I had just bought The Wombles' triple album set one day, put it on at home, and there it was. Batt is a real craftsman of a producer he has a different approach for every track. Batt found the proposition inviting; he cancelled his holiday and deferred a Wombles album so that he'd be ready for duty.
The album, "All Around My Hat" was recorded over the summer, and released at the beginning of October.
Things didn't happen immediately, but success on a scale unparalleled for Steeleye (or any folk-rock band, with the exception of Lindisfarne) was just around the bend. Finally Steeleye had broken on through to the other side; they are now genuinely the first band to put folk music into a meaningful rock context. It was all like some kind of weird initiative test and finally Steeleye had reached the end.
Batt was self-effacing about his own role - it had been understood that his participation started in the studio, all the material was chosen by the band themselves. Batt says: "Me meeting them didn't change their style at all - they'd already decided what they wanted to do. I just kept their noses to the grindstone, and organised them in the studio.
"I just tried to reflect their music as faithfully as possible; occasionally I thickened sounds. I suggested to Peter that he added a chugging triplet violin on 'All Around My Hat', and added strings on a couple of tracks; but basically they've got so much musical talent they don't really need anyone."
Prior to becoming Grand Womblemeister, Batt had worked out the arrangements on Family's "Music From A Doll's House" and produced albums for Big Joe Williams and The Groundhogs.
He agrees he has quite an ear for a hit tune, and thinks the bands follow up single (almost certainly to be "Hard Times of Old England", though he would prefer "Cadgwirth Anthem") will be another hit.
After all, it has a topical theme, and as Bob Johnson says, "English people like to wallow in their own privations."
No sell-out has been involved in all this; as Hart points out, the original sin was plugging in in the first place. Everything that followed was a logical and inevitable extension of that.
The band talk of greater respect for them in the business with Secunda now handling their affairs; he seems to have been an inspired choice. Secunda is in America at the moment, promoting the band's affairs.
"We're shipping 60,000 copies of 'All Around My Hat' says Tim "where as 'Now We Are Six' only sold 40,000 in total, and 'Commoner's Crown' wasn't even released over there."
And that's it as you know the European tour was abandoned because of Pegrum's gastro-enteritis, but that hardly matters now. Steeleye are bursting with energy and enthusiasm.
Their mission - to find a framework in which folk songs can function as rock music - has been successfully accomplished. You'd be well advised to catch up with them, if you've missed so far because of preconceived compartmentalising; to quote Ian MacDonald from a recent NME: "The thing that's at stake isn't the status quo so much as sheer enjoyment."
İNew Musical Express